Driver's Seat

A discussion occurred at work a few days ago, and true to form, it was not linear. It started out well enough. A coworker- actually a fellow contractor- was relating a story to me about a chance encounter a friend of his had with a celebrity. Both his friend and the celebrity were in the green room of a radio station getting ready to tape interviews with a nationally syndicated talk show host which I'm guessing neither one liked. However, there is a saying that goes something like, "No publicity is bad publicity".

The celebrity in question was big in the Eighties for a while, and had put out some music which I like, and this was still on my mind as I left work a short time later. I loaded my gear in truck, fired up the engine and headed home. A song was playing on the radio, and I thought to myself, "That song just isn't appropriate to drive to." I don't remember the song, but it was around 0400, and at that time of the morning not all songs really strike a chord. The two songs after that were Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen and Little River Band's The Night Owls. Both of these I regard as being excellent nighttime driving songs. Another great one, of course, is the title of this post, Driver's Seat by Sniff 'n' The Tears. Don Henley's Boys of Summer and even Donna Summer's Hot Stuff fit into the category of driving songs, as well as selections from Johnny Cash, George Thorogood, The Cars and a host of others.

Of course, whether one is going out or coming back also weighs heavily on the music selection. Don Felder's Heavy Metal (Takin' A Ride) and John Fogerty's Centerfield are both great going out songs, but for the return trip, something a bit more mellow and introspective is often appropriate- and this is where it gets a bit complicated. Barry Manilow is almost never driving music, but Neil Diamond might be. Similarly, the Eagles did a lot of great driving music, but great care must be taken in choosing their music. Just for starters, James Dean and Already Gone are definitely outbound songs, but Ol '55 is definitely a return trip song, as is New Kid In Town. Otis Redding's Sittin' By The Dock Of The Bay also fits in the return trip category.

And then there are the songs that just will play well whether the sun is just going down, or the birds are just starting to chirp. The Blues Brothers' Sweet Home Chicago and most of the collected works of Abba and Shania Twain fit here.

Database news: I've done a bit of light data entry recently, but nothing worth updating any statistics as of yet. I'm kicking around some ideas for a new table, but as it will include computers (and their innards, software and peripherals) I need to actually spend a bit of time and thought on this, and actually design it before building the table. In the interim, I'll be adding names to the Publisher/Manufacturer table.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.